State Revokes Services for Homeschoolers

My daughter Alana and I are featured in an article in today’s Daily News about the New York State Education Department’s stupid decision to deny special ed services to homeschoolers. While we homeschool my daughter, she receives physical therapy, occuational therapy and play therapy weekly to help with ADHD and gross motor skills development. Until now, the Board of Education had paid for these services, just as they do for public school students and even elite private school students. Now it looks like they are going to revoke those services, just for homeschooled kids.

Some libertarians may question whether I’m being hypocritical by receiving services from the state while opposing the welfare state and government schools. I might be making that same argument if I were in someone else’s shoes. However, the way I see it, I’m still paying way more in taxes than I’ll ever get back in services. Until they let me stop paying taxes, I’m not going to feel too bad about taking some of it back. Also, our daughter’s therapists our private contractors we choose, not part of the government education bureaucracy. And of course, if I have to choose between being the purest libertarian of them all and helping my daugher, the latter wins by a mile.

Now if I were taking matching funds for a political campaign, then I’d be a baaaad libertarian…

Homeschooled Heisman Winner

Tim Tebow, the Florida Gators quarterback, is not only the first sophomore ever to win the Heisman trophy, he was also homeschooled his entire life. Congratulations, Tim!

Reason #2,406 Why I’m Happy We Homeschool Our Kids

New York middle and secondary school children would be required to watch “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore’s documentary on global warming, under a bill sponsored by Assemblyman Peter Rivera, D-Bronx.

Rivera, chair of the Mental Health Committee, called the film “an excellent educational resource on the issues impacting life on our planet.”

Hat tip: NYPundit via Capitol Confidential

Education at gunpoint

John Sabini, a state senator from Queens and tool of the teachers union, has introduced a bill that would expand compulsory attendance in New York State from ages 4 to 18. If passed, Senate Bill 3549 would require children to attend school three years longer than they are currently required.

Where do we start dissecting this madness? For openers, it’s bad enough that I have to pay to babysit all the little monsters whose parents actually want them to attend the government indoctrination camps known as public school. (Why anyone would want that for their kids is a mystery to me, but we’ll save that for another day.) But for goodness sake, if parents want to keep their 4-year-olds at home, why should they have to answer to the state? And what is the state’s interest in keeping 17-year-olds locked up in their child-internment facilities, if these young men and women don’t want to be there?

Does anyone really believe that a young adult is going to learn anything just because the state is keeping them in school at gunpoint? For that matter, how much learning will any of the other kids do when their classroom is constantly disrupted by unruly prisoners?

Homeschoolers (such as my family) would not be off the hook either. As it stands, parents have to file a bunch of paperwork with the local educrats in order to obtain “permission” to teach their own children, starting at age 6 and ending at age 16. My wife and I are homeschooling our 5-year-old, who would otherwise be in P.S. kindergarten hell this year, and we’ve thus far legally avoided the Letters of Intent (LOI) and Individualized Home Instruction Plans (IHIPs) required of compulsory-age homeschoolers. Sabini’s bill would add three more years of pointless red tape to each of our children’s education, so that we can show that we’re properly educating our kids — as if that information is any of the state’s damn business.

Hat tip: Albanys Insanity

UPDATE: I just learned that Sabini is also the genius behind the bill to ban “spinners” (spinning hubcaps). This guy is a pip.